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Listen, I love mass transit, I love big sweeping plans…but remember when the last administration Biden was in was all about this? https://obamawhitehouse.archi

• melling 6y ago
  Maybe skip the vision and simply build one reasonably priced high-speed line somewhere. LA to Vegas? California has been trying to build a line for 5 decades. Now the price is beyond reasonable. China built 22,000 miles for under 500 billion? At this point we’ve got to be near ready for 300 mph maglevs.
  • sillyquiet 6y ago
    I wonder much attention China paid to environmental mitigation, labor costs, and the cost of the property over which these lines ran.
    • melling 6y ago
      Moving a billion people a year by rail is likely much more environmentally friendly than with cars and planes.
    • db48x 6y ago
      Building a new rail line is wonderfully easy when nobody actually owns the land they live on.
      • apostacy 6y ago
        Most high speed rail lines are just upgrades to existing lines. We already have these rights of way settled. That is all the more reason that should not be abandoned. It is typical to run minimal service to maintain the route, until service can be improved. China's passenger rail in rural areas looked downright dysfunctional 25 years ago, until it was upgraded, now it is the best in the world. I think it is perfectly fine to run empty trains to the middle of nowhere. NYC runs excessive service to neighborhoods that don't need it. There are four different lines to Coney Island that are nearly empty by the time they reach their destination, even during rush hour. They should not be abandoned though, because those neighborhoods have the capacity to grow. Neighborhoods that were lower traffic 20 years ago have only improved because of subway access, and are now reaching capacity limits. If we keep pruning parts of the network that are under-performing, we will be left with nothing. I don't think that characterizing mass transit networks as unidirectional money sinks is correct. Cost goes in the other direction as well; if you invest more, then they expand and more people use them, and then they become more efficient to operate. Eventually, populations align themselves around well developed public transit, but that can take decades. We just spent decades re-aligning the population around government subsidized highways and air travel, that's all.
        • db48x 6y ago
          Higher speed trains require a larger turn radius. The NE corridor is so built up that buying the land to widen all the curves would be a huge expense. Buying up people’s houses and businesses and tearing them down to build a faster train line might not pay off in the long term.
        • ghaff 6y ago
          A lot of commuter rail is like that. When I take commuter rail into Boston, it's almost empty when I get on or off near the end of the line while it's often standing room only during peak times by the time it gets near the city.
        • treis 6y ago
          >Most high speed rail lines are just upgrades to existing lines. We already have these rights of way settled. That is all the more reason that should not be abandoned. Most of that is used for freight as well. You can't realistically use the same rails for freight and high speed rail. So if we want high speed rail it will have to be entirely new tracks in a new right of way.
  • dmos62 6y ago
    Train travel in China is great! I really wish Europe had international train lines like that.
  • perardi 6y ago
    Maybe skip the vision and simply build one reasonably priced high-speed line somewhere. LA to Vegas? …well, OK, but then you say… California has been trying to build a line for 5 decades. Now the price is beyond reasonable. So I'm not sure how we get to that reasonably priced point.
    • NickM 6y ago
      So I'm not sure how we get to that reasonably priced point. Well I'm no expert, but other countries seem to be managing it just fine.